Things Fell Apart
by BBC Radio 4
If you've ever yelled at someone on social media about, say, cancel culture or mask-wearing, then you are a soldier in the culture wars - those everyday battles for dominance between conflicting values.
In Jon Ronson’s award winning first series of Things Fell Apart, he explored the origin stories of these culture wars which have divided us so toxically for decades. But now new battle lines have been drawn. Many of them are linked by one extraordinary thing: they all snowballed within days of each other, just weeks into lockdown. And so in Season Two of Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson uncovers intriguing and wholly unexpected origin stories, but this time of the culture wars that ignited during lockdown, and now dominate society.
Copyright: (C) BBC 2024
Episodes
S2. How Things Fell Apart, with Jon Ronson and Adam Buxton
36m · PublishedIn this bonus episode, Jon Ronson's friend and fellow podcaster Adam Buxton chat about the latest season of Things Fell Apart. They discuss their favourite moments from the show and how to best navigate the culture wars, all while also chatting about lockdown, fatherhood, social anxiety and how a rough time at Cardiff High School made Jon Ronson a better journalist.
S2. Ep 8: Mikki’s Hero’s Journey
37m · PublishedHow a former actor and model, burned by Hollywood and devastated by the death of his brother, has become a leading culture warrior, fueling the flames of every story we tell this season.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
S2. Ep 7: You’ll Own Nothing and You’ll Be Happy
33m · PublishedHow a young man with a novel idea for affordable accommodation, and an Oxford man with a plan for bus lanes, and a Danish woman writing a thought experiment about car rentals, unwittingly became hate figures for conspiracy theorists.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
S2. Ep 6: A Hierarchy of Trauma
33m · PublishedHow a bestselling book about trauma - lockdown’s number one bestseller - helped the culture war over free speech burst out of colleges and into the workplace. A shift some people pejoratively call the Great Awokening.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
S2. Ep 5: Things Weren’t Going Back To Normal
36m · PublishedHow an argument between a mother and her teenage daughter during lockdown led Governor Ron DeSantis to enact new and far-reaching laws in Florida.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
S2. Ep 4: Spicy Brando
35m · PublishedHow a disenfranchised young man, maddened by the strict lockdown laws in Michigan, joined a club of like-minded men and suddenly found himself under arrest for the most unlikely and horrific crime.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
S2. Ep 3: Tonight’s the Night, Comrades
31m · PublishedHow an American media polarized over Antifa led to an innocent family on a Twilight-themed lockdown-escaping camping trip getting barricaded in the woods by armed, hostile townspeople.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
S2. Ep 2: We’re Coming After You, Honey
33m · PublishedHow a chance encounter in a yacht club in the early 2000s between a bartender and a very wealthy couple with a daughter sick with a mystery disease ended with the creation of the first great covid conspiracy theory.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
S2. Ep 1: The Most Mysterious Deaths
34m · PublishedHow the mysterious deaths of 32 black sex workers in Miami in the 1980s led to a whole new (and spurious) mental health diagnosis that in turn led directly to another murder that occurred during the height of lockdown.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
Archive credits: NBC News June 1984; Fox Television’s A Current Affair 1989.
S2. Things Fell Apart is back
3m · PublishedSince Jon Ronson’s first series, new battle lines in the culture wars have been drawn. And many of them are linked by one extraordinary thing: they all snowballed within days of each other, in May 2020, six weeks into lockdown.
Millions of us spent our days locked at home with only the internet for company. People lost their jobs. Politicians told us what to do. We lived in fear of an invisible enemy nobody understood. This bizarre experience changed people psychologically. People and institutions fell apart. The pandemic – and lockdown – were to become dangerously fertile ground for conspiratorial thinking, and for new frontlines in the culture wars.
And so in Season Two of Things Fell Apart, Jon Ronson again uncovers intriguing and wholly unexpected origin stories, but this time of the culture wars that ignited during lockdown, and now dominate society.
Written and presented by Jon Ronson Produced by Sarah Shebbeare Original music by Phil Channell
Things Fell Apart has 21 episodes in total of non- explicit content. Total playtime is 11:13:11. The language of the podcast is English. This podcast has been added on January 14th 2024. It might contain more episodes than the ones shown here. It was last updated on May 2nd, 2024 21:41.
